The applicant has used a method for the cooking appliance sold on the market under the trade name SelfCooking Center®, in which a display and control device is used in the form of a touch screen, as shown partially in FIGS. 5-6. According to this method, after selection of a product to be cooked, in this example “universal roast”, the selected product to be cooked is displayed on a display 100. It is displayed in the area of a type of display relating to the product to be cooked 101 by means of a text information. For this selected type of product to be cooked, in respective selection areas for an external degree of cooking 102 and an internal degree of cooking 106, the desired degree of cooking can be selected. For this purpose, three selection buttons 103-105 and 107-109, respectively for external and internal degrees of cooking, are available. Their actuation requires basic knowledge of an operator, since the selectable degrees of cooking are described by a text. Operators in or from different countries understand different cooking results when the same text description for a degree of cooking is given. For example, it is well known that “pink” to describe a piece of meat is different in France than it is in Germany. And even within the same country, different regions or cooking styles have different standards. This leads to errors in operation and unsatisfactory cooking results respectively.
FIG. 6 shows a selection area for a size of the product to be cooked 110. Three selection buttons 111-113 are provided which entail the same adjustment difficulties as in the case of the degree of cooking shown in FIG. 5, since each operator will have different notions of what is meant by a “small” or “large” product to be cooked, when dealing for example with a roast.
A display and control device similar to FIG. 5 is also known from DE102004013553 B4. It discloses that a parameter can be pre-adjusted to be country-specific for the respective installation site and/or specific to one selectable operating language of a cooking appliance respectively. It discloses details on a dependence of a parameter relating to the product to be cooked on an installation site and/or operating language.
A method is known from EP1338849 A1, wherein a point can be approached by means of an input device in an at least two-dimensional characteristic field by an operator of the cooking appliance to adjust at least two parameters relating to the product to be cooked, so that the adjusted point can be implemented as part of the cooking process in a cooking program. This enables the degree of browning (external degree of cooking) and the core temperature (internal degree of cooking) of the product to be cooked to be selected as parameters relating to the product to be cooked. This method requires detailed knowledge by the operator of the parameters relating to the product to be cooked. This is particularly so since each parameter relating to the product to be cooked must be selected using specific numeric values. Thus, the operator must be a trained member of staff. Even in cases where the operator is a trained member of staff, the method known from EP1338849 is complicated such that the risk of operating errors and thus of undesired cooking results can be high.
EP1384951 A1 as well as the parallel U.S. Pat. No. 7,057,142 disclose a method in which a degree of browning, as an external degree of cooking, can be selected by means of a touch screen, and an internal degree of cooking can be selected by means of the color inside of the product to be cooked. This is achieved by using bar charts which represent specific numeric values for the adjustable parameters relating to the product to be cooked. Thus, this method provides the same disadvantages as the cooking method of EP1338849.
DE102004046521 B3 discloses a method for adjusting or selecting an operating program of a cooking appliance, in which a pre-adjusted parameter can be changed by, for example, actuating a pictogram button.
EP1716795 A1 discloses the use of selection elements for the product to be cooked which offer visualized products to be cooked, selection elements for the product to be cooked and calibration selection elements for the product to be cooked. A visualization of the products to be cooked is provided by an illustration of the products, for example with a simple illustration of a fish for fish products. This simplifies the selection of a type of product to be cooked. However, the selection elements for the product to be cooked and the calibration selection elements for the product to be cooked provide alpha-numeric symbols which in turn make it difficult for untrained operators to make a selection.
A visualization of a selected product to be cooked, in form of the origin of a piece of meat, such as a shoulder of a pork, is known from EP1741989 A2.
The display of a selected mass and the type of a product to be cooked is known from DE3039301 A1.
A button arrangement with three function fields, respectively for a type of preparation, a type of food and a quantity of food, is known from DE3701308 A1.
DE10336115 A1 discloses a cooking appliance with a browning sensor device, an electronic unit, a storage unit and an input unit. A degree of browning can be retrieved, stored and modified by means of a free selectable name. Furthermore, a residual cooking time can be calculated by comparing a sensed degree of browning and a predetermined degree of browning. The sensed degree of browning can be displayed during operation of the cooking appliance on a display field. The browning must be selected by a name, and thus specialized knowledge is required.
JP02-122119 A discloses a cooking appliance. The appliance includes a camera that records an image of a product to be cooked. The appliance further includes a cooking progress decision device that compares the image with a plurality of pre-adjusted images. An operator can select other images by means of a keypad to select a desired cooking result. The cooking procedure is not started before desired cooking result has been selected. This selection method provides only a low degree of flexibility, since the desired end result is not possible by individual selection of parameters relating to the product to be cooked, and it is subject to error, in particular by untrained operators, due to the necessity of making inputs via the keypad.
For a toaster, it is known from WO 03/011090 A1 that a desired browning of a piece of toast can be adjusted by moving an indicator along a browning scale. It is also known from WO 03/011090 A1 that the color of a piece of toast can be recorded during a toasting procedure and compared with the desired end color, to determine the end time of the toasting procedure. The color scale provided for an operator does not correspond to the actual color of the piece of toast desired, but comprises grey tones from white to black. This, in turn, complicates the selection of a desired degree of browning. Also, a toaster cannot be compared to a cooking appliance, in whose cooking chamber a plurality of different products to be cooked can be cooked selectively, by, for example, applying hot air and/or steam.
Furthermore, cleaning methods for cooking appliances are known from the prior art wherein a degree of cleaning is determined, for example, by a degree of soiling, degree of calcification and/or degree of corrosion. EP1953457 relates to such a cleaning method and discloses the calculation of a degree of soiling by calculating a soiling account by sum up soiling points over time.